Water found on the moon may spur more space exploration, lunar settlement and lunar mining (Source: jyi.org)

Space entrepreneurs look to extract resources from the moon, but others are arguing that international laws need to be made first

Lunar
geologists and space entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly intrigued by the
concept of lunar mining now that researchers have discovered an abundance of water on
the moon. But others are suggesting that many obstacles need to be overcome
before such a project can be executed.

The
discovery of lunar water has
raised questions as to whether other resources such as helium 2 and rare Earth
elements could be found on the moon as well. Now, certain countries are looking
to race to the moon.

Paul
Spudis, Ph.D., a lunar geologist and Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and
Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, has expressed interest in lunar mining and
has even devised a plan for returning to the moon despite the fact that the
Obama administration has no plans to return to the moon at all due to its cancellation
of the Constellation program. Spudis' plan involves "robotic
resource extraction and the deployment of space-based fuel depots" using
water from the moon before any humans return to its surface.

On the
other hand, Mike Wall, editor of SPACE.com, believes lunar
mining should not be attempted before ironing out a few technical and legal
issues. For instance, an international agreement consisting of property rights,
a salvage law and a mining law would be needed in order to decide who owns the
resources once they are extracted. The Outer Space Treaty does not allow nation
states to claim territories on the moon, but it does not
mention anything regarding resource mining, and laws need to be set before any
mining on the moon begins.

To set
these laws, several proposals have been submitted with viable ideas to set
lunar mining in motion. One proposal, which was published in the SMUJournal of Air Law and Commerce, recommended
that "space faring countries" should claim and defend a large portion
of land around an established lunar settlement and sell the land to investors
on Earth, which could fund the commercial venture.

A second
proposal suggested an international agreement to sell lunar land to investors
in an effort to fund space exploration programs.

China,
Russia and India have expressed interest in resource development on the
moon.

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Yeah I agree. Plus with rules in place, that kinda sets the tone for the investors and countries involved. We could think of it instead of choosing the type of carrot to hang in front of the horse and cart.

Setting the stage for a declaration of independence of the first permanent colonist on the moon.

The moon, mars and any other non terrestrial body should be considered open for settlement and not under control of terrestrial governments. There is already a precedent of someone who is selling property on the moon, would these treaties nullify the deeds already sold? The treaty on Antarctica more or less says that no one owns it, so why not the same with celestial objects?

At most make a treaty that states that any permanent base on any non terrestrial object is the center of a territory of X square kilometers and will be considered a sovereign state unto itself under the control of the entity founding the base. That was if any individual were to be able to establish a base on the moon then even they could control their destiny there. Nations, corporations or individuals should all have the right to do so. Let the moon develops independently of the earth's governments.

I think under these terms it might even be able to spark a new age of exploration and advancement in space flight technology with a land rush similar to what founded the western half of the United States. Give people a real reason to push the technology to the limits to get there and there will be a faster development of that technology. With the fickle nature of governments down here, if it is not opened up we may never get there in any large way.

I agree, I don't see a problem with starting to talk more realistically about what countries/companies can own outside of Earth, what they can mine, etc.

The whole premise for this article strikes me as funny though... whoa we discovered that there is water on the moon - that means there could be Helium 2 or rare Earth elements! Hey, maybe there will be cheese or diamonds! I don't get how one follows from the other. Lots of meteorites have obviously hit the moon, and we know comets and meteorites have water - so why would it be a surprise that there is water on the moon? What would have happened to it when it crashed there? It's a low energy element, so it's not going to decompose. And yes, it will sublimate, but the moon has gravity, so it will still be trapped until it falls in a dark cold spot where it won't sublimate from... exactly where they found a bunch of it.

Also, a quick bone to pick on rare earth metals... which were also mentioned in an article yesterday. They are rare earth METALS, not rare earth materials or rare earth elements - and just so everybody knows, they aren't really all that rare, it was just a naming convention for the f-group of the periodic table. People just didn't have much use for them until recently, so they weren't being mined much.

Now, getting elements that are rare on earth but useful might be worthwhile. Those would be "rare elements" or "rare elements on Earth", not rare earth elements. It just seems like you are trying to reference the whole Chinese rare earth metals mining situation. It's not worth going to the moon for those.